When I returned from a little grandma
time (not long enough!) with my new granddaughter, I hit the ground running for
my campaign. I’ve been talking with voters, placing signs, & campaign
materials are ready for block-walking.
I’m not a politician. I have no higher
aspirations than to represent Windcrest residents on city council. This
campaign isn’t a stepping stone for me. This city has been home for me for 23
years & I’m unhappy with what I see happening at city hall. From what I’m hearing
from a lot of my supporters, they are unhappy too.
As many of you know, I’ve been
very active in Windcrest, speaking at city council meetings & serving on
various committees & commissions for many years. I made the decision to run
for city council while serving as chair of the 2015 Charter Review Commission
earlier this summer. I had chaired the 2010 Charter Review Commission & the
differences between then & now were very disturbing.
5 years ago, with a citizen petition
for charter amendments in hand, Mayor Bruns & the council appointed members
for a Charter Review Commission to review the rest of the charter. Under Texas Local Government Code Sec. 9.004,
the charter amendments from the citizen petition had to be on the ballot of the
next election. Since our Texas Constitution states a home-rule charter can only
be amended every 2 years, the Charter Review Commission had to be finished by
the first week of August to meet the ballot deadlines. The commission was given
free reign to do our job of reviewing our charter; deciding dates to meet,
conducting public hearings for citizen input, & the city staff readily accommodated
all of our requests for data. We finished our review by the end of July, having
met every week from the first week of June. The council approved all of the commission’s
recommended changes. By law, the petition amendments had to be presented to the
voters without any modification by the commission or the council. All of the
amendments from the petition & commission were passed by the voters.
Fast forward to the 2015 Charter
Review Commission. At the very first meeting on April 30th, 3 dates to meet had
already been decided for us & we were told we had to be finished by the end
of June 2015. We were also given a choice of 2 dates in July for a public
hearing, but it had to be when city council met. The new ‘policy’ for public
hearings was 15 days notice in the city’s designated official newspaper & a
postcard mailed to the citizens, despite the commission’s attorney informing
the mayor & council that state law only requires 72 hours notice. After continually
being told that the public hearing notices had to be published in the Northeast
Herald, I found Resolution No. 2012-411 (R), a resolution designating the San
Antonio Express-News & the Northeast Herald as the designated official newspapers
for the city. However, the commission finally had to call the public hearing a ‘citizen’s
forum’ to bypass the mayor’s insistence to adhere to ‘policy’ in order for the
citizens to give public input. The commission faced many obstacles to finish
our review; availability of meeting times, refusal to amend agendas before
posting, 2 denials of a public hearing, & refusal to timely provide documents, which the commission needed to complete its review. Despite those
obstacles, we determined, as the 2010 Commission had; our own meeting dates,
spent about the same number of hours reviewing the charter, & finished our
review with proposed amendments by the end of July.
Several of us on the 2015 Charter
Review Commission were rightly concerned that the proposed amendments wouldn’t
be placed on the November ballot & we circulated a citizen’s petition,
gathering 275 signatures in 2 weeks time calling for a vote on them. Even though
Texas Local Government Code Sec. 9.004 compels a vote on charter amendments
brought by a citizen petition & case law supports it, our council voted to
ignore the petition & only 7 of the 10 proposed amendments from the 2015 Charter
Review Commission were passed to be on the November ballot.
The final straw for me was when one
of the council members called for an investigation of the Charter Review
Commission & the petition at the August 3, 2015 Special City Council
Meeting. I filed to run for Council Place 4 the very next day & the rest is,
as they say, history.
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